Mayron Cole Piano Method

In 1969, I fulfilled a lifelong dream and created The Mayron Cole Piano Studio in the living room of my home in Houston, Texas. From the beginning, I was not pleased with the then-available piano methods. There was too much focus on reading fingering numbers and too little emphasis on teaching rhythm counting and note reading. Concepts were presented too fast with practically no reinforcement in later lessons. My students were floundering. That’s when I decided to write the piano method that I’d always envisioned. I theorized that playing the piano involves three basic steps:

• The first “step” is a thorough understanding of playing/counting rhythm. I believe that rhythm is the foundation upon which all music is built. Too often, rhythm is the weakest element of a piano method!
• The second step is exploring and understanding the keyboard. This means being able to find keys on the keyboard without looking at one’s hands so that one can later sight-read.
• The third and most difficult of the three steps is staff note reading. Staff note reading involves abstract reasoning and is the reason too-young students cannot read notes and resort to reading fingering numbers in those “other” methods.

All of my piano teaching material follows these three basic steps of learning!

At first, I taught my students private lessons only. But, like so many other piano teachers, I soon began to tire of teaching the same concepts over and over to one private student after another. I also resented the time my students were taking me away from my own children. So, I began placing some students with the same piano-playing abilities in small groups and teaching all of them at the same time. Surprisingly, the group piano classes created an unexpected surge in enthusiasm and lesson preparation by the students. And, I could easily see that the group-taught students were becoming stronger musicians than my few remaining privately-taught students. Their rhythm counting and sight-reading skills were superior in every way! In the fall of 1974, THE MAYRON COLE MUSIC CONSERVATORY was born!

Between 1974 and 1984, I slowly realized by experience that I could write new compositions to specifically teach a new piano concept for each lesson. The students learned much faster than before! That encouraged me to write more and more until there was literally a closet full of lessons. Lessons that didn't work and compositions that were disliked by my students over these years were discarded. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but those first group piano students were also testing all of the music for the many thousands of students who would eventually study from my books. So many students wanted to learn with my piano teaching method that the conservatory had to be moved from my home to a commercial building in 1982. The company was incorporated as a "C corp." in 1984 under charter number 7231549-0 from the State of Texas. The Mayron Cole Music Conservatory, Inc.® subsequently became one of the largest privately owned music schools in Texas.

Because of my success, other teachers began asking me if they could purchase my teaching materials of ensemble music, practice music, performance solos, theory games, rhythm taps, theory fun sheets, music history lessons, orchestrated accompaniment disks, operettas, and summer piano programs. The first books were not sold until the spring of 1988. In all of the intervening years, the proven, successful lesson plan has not changed. My books are different from other piano teaching methods in THREE very significant ways:

• This was the first piano teaching method to enter the market after 10 years of development by trial, error, and improvement using "real" students in a "real-time" teaching situation. The very first book to be sold had already been used to teach many hundreds of students at my Conservatory.
• This was the first piano teaching method that was developed from the very start to teach piano students in groups. Other methods were developed originally for "private" lessons and later modified for teaching in groups. The reason for this is that there were no electronic pianos until the Baldwin Electronic Piano became available around 1980, followed quickly by the Roland keyboards and others. Until this invention, it was not possible to play a group of acoustic pianos together because they had to be perfectly in tune, because of significant space problems in most teaching studios, and because of the cost of acoustic pianos.
• This was the first piano teaching method that combined in EACH lesson the new piano concepts for that lesson, original compositions written by me (or classics chosen by me) to teach the new concepts, specific re-enforcing games, group learning activities, and practice pieces to augment the learning process. Each new concept is reviewed many times in the later method books to complete the learning process. The students buy only one "textbook" of 90-100 pages instead of a lesson book + theory book + solo book + scale book + music history book + performance book where the material may or may not be related to the current lesson and will eventually cost more than one of my "jumbo books" with all of those items included.

Many traditional piano teachers wanted to become group piano teachers, too. I began conducting summer training seminars. The first training seminar was in Dallas, TX, in 1989. My husband, Bill, managed his own business and also the office of my music school/publishing company. The teaching materials had already been named by my students as the MAYRON COLE GROUP PIANO METHOD^©. Our early teacher clients named the
3-ring binder with its logo the "RED BOOK." From this modest beginning, we decided to sell directly to teachers and not sell through stores because we wanted to maintain direct contact with our customers so that we could help them and train them. When we opened our web site in 1998 at www.mcpiano.com, my group piano teaching method quickly spread to every state. I eventually had to phase out my piano teaching in order to spend more time writing and composing new teaching material.

In 2001, my husband, Bill, retired from his profession as an Orthopaedic Surgeon, and we returned to my hometown of Gonzales, Texas. We also moved our publishing business to Gonzales from Houston. Bill took over the reigns as full-time CEO. By 2004 & again in 2006, he directed our expansions into progressively larger warehouses in order to accommodate our increasing inventory and the expanding shipping department.

In 2003, the company added a new division to the Mayron Cole Music Conservatory, Inc. when we opened the John Fauth Guest Cottage in Gonzales, TX. We discovered that the oldest continuously occupied residence in the city was across the street from our home! Mayron supervised an 11 month reconstruction and interior design of the cottage to the way it was when it was built in 2 stages in 1867 and 1876. Fauth was a master carpenter, barrel maker, carriage builder, and casket maker who built the cottage by hand before electricity. He created beautiful parquet floors, a hand-carved fireplace mantle, & beautifully carved door frames out of long-leaf pine and cypress which are both commercially extinct now. The exterior architecture is "steamboat gothic" (also known as "Craftsman gothic"). This rare style was used only a few homes throughout the south for a short time after the civil war. The John Fauth Guest Cottage is the only remaining example of this architecture in Gonzales county: "An historic cottage in an historic town."_^sm

In the summer of 2004, one of our daughters, Colleen Mayron Cole, joined the company as vice-president. She is a certified teacher of the Mayron Cole Piano Method, and she has had extensive experience in office and production management. Colleen also has two group piano teaching studios: one in Canyon Lake, TX, and the other in Gonzales, TX. She will carry our corporation through another generation. Colleen is the composer of MENEHUNES! ^© in the Level 5-A^© Student Book, Menehune Sing-A-Long Favorites Folksongs^© , Menehune Sing-A-Long Christmas Favorites^©, Level 1 Sing-A-Long Favorites Folksongs^©, Level 1 Sing-A-Long Christmas Favorites!^©, The 3 Piano Bingo Theory Games^©, Fur Elise Solo^©, and developed the Blast Off With Piano Junior student book as well as some of our most recent solo and ensemble releases. Colleen answers your e-mail questions about The Mayron Cole Piano Method^©. Some of the most helpful questions and answers are posted on Colleen's teacher email page for you to review. We hope that this is helpful.

A third division of the Mayron Cole Music Conservatory, Inc. was launched in the spring 2005. A new retail product, Piano Made Easy®, was developed by Colleen Cole, Chris Mays, and Mayron Cole over a period of more than 4 years. It came to market in the spring of 2005. By 2006, Piano Made Easy^® was for sale online at www.pianomadeeasy.com and Amazon.com. After a review and testing by the independent consultants of The National Parenting Center, Piano Made Easy was awarded the Center's HOLIDAY - 2006 SEAL OF APPROVAL:

Piano Made Easy® teaches the first two out of three steps in learning how to actually read music for beginners from 7 years old to 107 years old. It features an interactive CD-ROM and a 49-key battery operated keyboard with additional DC converter at no extra charge. The piano keyboard is place in front of the computer screen in place of the typing keyboard. The Piano Made Easy® CD-ROM features beautiful artwork and a zany trip through a zoo as the beginner piano/keyboard students learn that reading music is really enjoyable! After completion of the program the students are encouraged to find a teacher in their area to continue learning music by going to our online listing of teachers who use our material and who have requested that we list them on our web site teacher links section. (Privacy Notice)

In November, 2006, Piano Made Easy^® was the subject of a newspaper article in the Business Section of the San Antonio Express-News.

From the beginning over 35 years ago, we have conducted our ever-growing business the “old fashioned” way. We personally answer our phones during work hours whenever possible, and we try our best to ship customers’ orders within 24 regular workday hours after the paid orders are received. Our toll-free phone lines, toll free fax, email mayroncole@mcpiano.com, online store, and credit card center expedite public school and piano studio orders from all of the U.S. and Canada.

The Mayron Cole Piano Method^© is the only published group piano method with sixteen different levels of piano books — programs for six-year-old beginning students through advanced levels. That is why our piano method is preferred by many group piano teachers. But we are not through growing! We have recently produced a professionally made video that instructs teachers in the skills of group piano teaching: Seminar Video Tape/ DVD set. And, we have orchestrated all of our music on CDs as well as SMF (standard midi file) disks. Advanced solos and new piano ensembles are frequently added to our inventory. The New Products page is updated regularly. Check out our Group Piano Teacher Studio Set-up Kit Special Discount offer. It will help you start a new career as a group piano teacher at more than $ 100.00 off of the regular price of 20 items chosen by Mayron Cole just for you.

By the spring & summer of 2007, Piano Made Easy^® expanded into the national retail market after receiving numerous recognitions from the educational toy industry including iParenting Media Award, The Toy Man Award of Excellence, Family Review Center Platinum Award, Mr. Dad Seal of Approval, Mamacita! Seal, The Family Review Seal of Approval, iParenting Magazine Children Today Review, About.com Best Educational Toys of 2007, & Creative Child Magazine's TOP TOY of the YEAR in its category!

In July 2007, we hosted The Group Piano Teachers National Convention in San Antonio, TX. Piano teachers received additional training, gained new insights for their business, and networked with other group piano teachers. With 25 seminars to choose from, The Group Piano Teachers National Convention featured plenty of possibilities for everyone as well as direct instruction from Mayron and Colleen Cole!

We moved our inventory to a fulfillment company during 2008 and published a updated internet store site. By 2009 our large warehouse was no longer necessary since our orders were being processed thru the fulfillment company. This allowed us to move our corporate office to a new location and devote much more time to developing new products and improving old ones. Later that year, Colleen produced and released new instruction video on DVD: Starting A Group Piano Studio From Scratch. If you think that you just do not know where to begin or how to start...start here!